The forest is a memoryof lifethe graveyard remembersdeath with little chairswhere we are supposed to sitand chat among otherdead things likestone squirrelsdried trees their branchesabandoned snakesbricked-in like Poe'shorror or freshly dugunder the snow

A Damon Runyon character sagely suggests that the odds on life are 6-5 against.

Ah, how unkind the fates, whisking away the green thought from one instant to the next, tracking you down, knocking you over, and all that's left is the yawning black hole in the ground.

The heartbreakingly sad little material displays, the lightbulbs baby dolls toys and kickshaws would presumably mime, in innocent, unknowing caricature, the security-blanket function once served by the substantial booty-duties cargo'd into the next world by the great, the pharaohs & kings & their great consorts.

But for the obscure (the great mass of us) there are no such high-end-commodity obsequies to be expected. The obscure go into the next world unburdened by wealth, nor even by a name. And those must be seen as mercies.

(The poor have ways of retaining dignity that seem closed off to the better-off; a while back I saw an article about the increasing number of people who insist on having their cell phones buried with them; after all, you'd hate to miss that once-in-a-lifetime power-shot call from your broker.)

There are so many heavyweight memorial poems for the world's oh-so-many heavy hitters (but where are they now), still that tradition always includes a certain danger of seeming compulsory, perfunctory -- the job aspect.

But with this special poet it's quite different. No weeping, bowing, scraping, no floods of crocodile tears. Only that simplicity and plainness, the lightness of touch, the graceful, gentle, unimposing delicacy of the respect -- captured in the characteristically brilliant Robin Herrick moments ("glided by", "and so I dy'd":; "Th'easie earth"; "let/Spring") that are so very beautiful.

Sometimes only a fine subtle vessel will do as proper receptacle for the truth of feeling.

The narrowed scarcely sacred grovea flat ring of concrete cul-de-sacpatrolled by cars, cats and vultures.Now dozens rise to fan us twice with shadowsheralding cooler days perhapsor praying put out more scraps.

On the crowded side where trash comes firsta gravelled alley butt midden for careless motorists.I face the beauty side through a wide bay window,kinder neighbors, garden grass surrounds,the usual companions known as weeds,redbuds, peach trees, walnuts, rabbitromps, the banker's neat brick ranch,then the buried grove itself,four acres belonging to several neighbors,a strip left wild along the upper hollowmade hollower by encircling pavements. Sincefarming ceased in town all pasture gone,a barbed enclosure fit for screening.

They took him out, a tramp across green, from green to green, entertained him with birds' nests set deep in thorned twigs and split light. There had been tea and toast and chess, an evening to get through and a night. He stood between them at evening at the door of the house. Now in the sky there was a bar of the green that has no name. He was standing on grass darkening beside dark green. She had said, "It is all Hermes, all Aphrodite."

Grave on the high plains, Dawson County, photo by Russell Lee, March 1940

What was I doing there?This is written in a lanugage I will never comprehend.

Grave and headstone in mountain cemetery. Pie Town, New Mexico: photo by Russell Lee, June 1940

These shadows are cleartheir meaning not. I thoughteverything would be biggerlarger than life.

Grave and headstone in mountain cemetery. Pie Town, New Mexico: photo by Russell Lee, June 1940

We had to guard the grave of Russell Lee, despite his protests. He was not freshly deador even nearly, you see.

Newly-dug grave, Rochester, Pennsylvania: photo by John Vachon, January 1941

Lots of times the numbers seem backwardsbut this time they are notbecause of the horizon linecurved and holding my bones(Sincerely, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark).

Grave, Kempton, West Virginia. The cemetery is on the top of a hill behind the town photo by John Vachon, May 1939

Well, they said to build a castleand we got a start on onebut gave up after the gateto keep out the pigs was finally finished.There was a crest attached at one point of a black eagle and (real) castle. The old one had a bear.

Old grave near Cruger, Mississippi: photo by Russell Lee, September 1938

I was a bakerof almond crescentsthose cookies for dippinginto hot drinks. My toes pointed to the next townten miles away,a day's walk and I'm glad to be in the orchard under a small moona small feather.

The idea of balance in life has never been so lovingly recreated.I've already written about this and it might have seemed like I had the chairs all figured out and such, but, in truth, I haven't. This might be one for the Wooden Boy.

That delicately brilliant capture of an all-too-brief beginning, "But borne," with the built-in (and crucial to the meaning) long pause between words -- "born" of a craftsman's intimacy with the micro-measured stretched-out timing between the closing and opening consonants in those two adjacent stressed syllables -- is always a reminder to me (as is the trip from "let" across the chasm of that last line-break to "Spring") of how much a great poet can do in a very small space.